The Weight of Gravity (10 page)

             
“It was kind of you to give me a ride.  I'm not used to relying on the company of strangers to help me survive the elements."

             
"That's sad.  Sometimes, around these parts, the kindness of strangers is all you have.”  She turned away from him.  “And, now you’re starting to sound like a pathetic heroine in a Tennessee Williams play."

"Yeah, okay."
She did it again.  Now she's really pissed me off. 
"Goodnight.”  Max got out of the truck.  He’d barely started up the walk when she backed away.  The truck lights flashed across the dark house, throwing his silhouette up to the rooftop and back down again.  He stood on the porch watching her taillights until she reached the end of the drive, turned onto the gravel road, and disappeared.

              Sometime in the middle of the night Erika felt Garner slip into bed.  He smelled of airplanes and stale wine.  She imagined he probably had dinner with clients, then a couple more drinks in first class flying home.  She pretended not to wake when he nuzzled her shoulder, and was grateful she'd decided not to sleep nude, choosing at the last minute to wear heavy flannels.

             
She rose the next morning before he did and went downstairs.  Breaking routine, she took her coffee and sat among the flowerpots and planters on the back porch.  It had been a while since she'd noticed her well-kept garden and landscaping.  She never saw the workers. Garner hired them.  She smiled at the beautiful flowerbeds and imagined they all smiled back at her.

Too soon
she heard Garner and Jay bumping around in the kitchen.  Erika didn't want to wait for the slim chance that Garner might join her on the porch and break the peacefulness of the moment, so she said goodbye to the marigolds, palms, bird-of-paradise, hybiscus and gardenia blossoms, and went inside.

Jay was at the breakfast counter throwing down a bowl of sugar-somethings.  Garner was in dress shirt and tie, sitting at the dinette drinking coffee and reading the morning paper.  Neither acknowledged her presence when she poured another cup and sat at the table.

"Busy day?" she finally asked.

"Yeah," Garner said behind the paper. 

"Say what, Mom?" Jay asked, in mid shovel.

"How was your trip?"

"Fine" –

"I didn't hear what you said, Mom?"

It was several moments later before Garner lowered the paper, but he still didn't look at her.  He scanned pages from what looked like a legal brief -- maybe a deposition.

"Hey?"  He finally looked up.  "When did you buy me this tie?  I like it.  It's new, isn't it?"  He ran his hand down the silk.

Erika nearly choked on her coffee.  It was Darrell's tie! 
That asshole left it on purpose.  He'll have a good laugh at my expense when Garner gets to the office.

"Found it draped on my valet.  I assumed you wanted me to wear it."  He rose and walked around the table, gave her a breath of a kiss, and headed for the garage.  "Thanks again.  Can't wait to show it off around the firm.  Gotta go."

"Me, too."  She heard Jay bounce his bowl into the sink, throw his book bag on his shoulder and head through to the entry.  The front door slammed and peace descended on the house.

Erika rose from the table and walked the length of her home, to the piano room.

Play for me, Reeki,
a young man’s voice said in her head.

             
She sat on the piano bench and stared across the ebony top, through the large windows at the Sacramento Mountains in the distance.

             
Play for me, Reeki. Please,
he beckoned again.

             
What would you like for me to play?

             
You know.

             
Tell me, my love.

             
Play … Rachmaninoff … Concerto #2.  Play for me, Reeki.

             
Her hands hovered a moment longer above the keys, as if to touch them would burn her fingertips.

             
Play for me, Reeki.  Rachmaninoff … Concerto #2.

             
She lowered her hands, and they began to dance on their own while her mind played through a thousand memories of another time, another place, and her love for a young man who wanted to be a writer. The music and memories became one, rising and falling together with each movement of the piece.  Like a film running in fast-forward, the images raced through her mind as her fingers flew across the keyboard.  The final crescendo exploded around her.

             
Damn you, Max!  Why now?  Why did you wait so long to come back?

Her young audience was waiting.  She showered, dressed and drove to the bookstore.  Sitting in the SUV at the curb outside the bookstore, Erika remembered the hours she and Max spent roaming the racks of new books and stealing dozens of kisses in the corners.  Perhaps, subconsciously, she played these mini-concerts to be closer to those glorious memories.  She looked up at the granite edifice of the storefront.  Surely, Max wouldn't choose this place for them to meet after more than twenty years,
would he?

“Did ya have fun last night, Max?”  Doris had served breakfast, again.  Max ate too much, again.  “Obviously, you got home okay.  You were in such a rush to get away from Jackie’s claws that I didn’t have time to tell you taxis are hard to find in Cottonwood.  But I guess you found that out for yourself.”

“Got a ride with someone named Mel ... Melody.  Drove a very large truck with
KC
on the side.”

“Probably Melody Kristoffersen.”

“Kristoffersen Contractors?” Max asked.

“Same one.  Mel took over the management when their daddy’s mind started to go.  Some say s
he’s a hell of a businesswoman.  Better than the old man, even.”

“Is she married?”

Doris looked up from her coffee.  “And you’re interested, why?”

“Yeah, Mel asked me that, too.”

“You asked Mel if she was married?  Good grief, Max.  Keep your eye on the prize.  Are you back here because of Erika or not?”

“Doris, I don’t know why I’m here
.”  Max leaned back in his chair.  He was into his second day since he crossed into the city limits and was still confused about the real reason for the visit, except that he had a growing desire to see her, speak to her.  Erika was the key it seemed, although he wasn’t certain about that either.  So much had changed in twenty years, and, yet, every sight, sound and smell was strikingly familiar to him.  The most changed thing in this picture, he concluded, was Max Rosen.  He wasn’t the same person by any stretch, but somehow he seemed to be a apart of it all; or it was all a part of him.  Either way, he needed to see Erika, and soon.

“You can’t sleep.”

“I’m sleeping fine, now.”  Max smiled.  “And eating like a pig.”

“Are you writing?” Doris asked.

“Now there’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?  Not yet, but I’m thinking about it, and that’s more than I’ve done in the last eight months.” 

He’d made this realization the first morning he woke in Cottonwood.  Lying in the shadows of the dawn light squeezing through the window blinds in his room, spilling along the edges of his bed and up onto the ceiling, his mind began to inextricably compose a new story.  He wasn’t at all sure what the story was about yet, but it began like all the others, with images, faces, smells, the sound of peoples voices, lines of dialogue, relationships, exposed emotions.  Sometimes the stories in his novels grew out of a single ima
ge.  Perhaps it was a woman in a wedding dress, alone and crying on a bridge in Central Park, or the adoring faces of an exotic couple illuminated by warm candle light in a cramped walk-down café on Christmas Eve.  It didn’t take much for his mind to begin to write a new story once he had an idea, at least it didn’t used to.  For over a year before coming to Cottonwood absolutely nothing inspired his work.  He’d written things, of course, but it never went anywhere.  The characters in his latest work were exciting at first, but within a day they were uninteresting and boring to him.  The storylines he came up with had promise in the moment of inspiration, when he would rush back to his study to write, but that quickly died when he realized how thin and forced the ideas were, more contrived than creative.  The more he tried to write, the more he seemed to fail. 

Coming to Cottonwood, then, was a desperate act by an extremely frustrated artist.  But something happened that first morning in his father’s old house.  Maybe it was only a weak desire to create, a sliver of an interest in putting words on a page.  And, maybe, like everything else he tried recently, the inspiration would wilt and blow away in the desert wind.  But, it was there that first morning, and again, even stronger, the second morning.

They heard the screen door on the back porch open and slam shut.  Heavy boots approached the kitchen door.

“Come on in, Donny,” Doris called, taking a sip of coffee, her back still to the doorway.

“Mornin', sweetheart!” came a raspy reply.

Max watched as a giant came through the door, dropping his head to avoid hitting it on the crossbeam.  He bent at the waist and kissed Doris gently on the cheek.  A delicate gesture from such a large creature seemed absurd to Max.

“You remember Donny, don’t you, Max?” Doris asked.

The mountain approached him, stopping only when he could go no further, and looking down his chest at Max.  Max felt like a Hobbit in the forest of living trees.

“You’re not going to kiss me, too, are you?” Max asked, his hand shaking as he raised the cup from the table.

“Nah, I’m sure you wouldn’t taste near as sweet as Doris, there,” Donny said, smiling.

The smile did little to make Donny seem less threatening, Max thought, given the enormity of his teeth.

“Donny is the Ramirez baby boy.  Pablo, his brother, was one of
your school mates,” Doris said.

“Okay.  I remember.”  Max was hoping the giant would take a step backward, now that they had established a tenuous relationship.  “Grew, didn’t you?”

“Just a mite,” Donny said, his smile growing wider.  “You don’t look as if you changed all that much, Max.  But I heard you got rich.”  The giant stepped back behind Doris’ chair and put his toaster-sized hands on her small shoulders.

“You remember me, Donny?  You were very small ... young ... when I left Cottonwood.”

“Don’t matter how old I was.  I don’t ever forget much of anything.”

“Sit and have some coffee, boy,” Doris said, then got up and moved toward the stove.

“Can’t.  Got to move those dollar horses over to the south side of the range.”  Max watched as Donny stuffed two whole biscuits in his mouth, and put two more in his shirt pockets.

“’Dollar horses?’” Max repeated.

“Donny’s talking about the Sanchez stable of racers, the ones they run at the Downs on the reservation,” Doris explained.

“Wanna come along, Max?”

“Go on, Max,” Doris urged.  “You could use a little sun.  I’ll give you one of your daddy’s old feed store hats.”

It surprised Max that he was mildly interested in the idea of participating in something that could involve physical labor.  He recalled his father’s constant chides about how Max didn’t work hard enough, wouldn’t amount to “a hill of beans, no how,” and was destined to be destitute, just like his mother.  Pop was always moving, a perpetual taskmaster.  For Pop, there was “never nothing to do,” Max heard him often say.
  Max wasn’t adverse to physical labor, just the idea that all things were a result of it.  To Pop’s reasoning, work meant digging a ditch or mending a fence line or transforming a thirty-foot oak into two cords of firewood, or even castrating an overexcited stallion into a gelding.  The idea that crafting a well-written short story was work didn’t go over well with Pop.  Dirty hands, excessive perspiration, a few cuts and bruises were the byproducts of hard work, and he did a lot of it, and groused whenever Max was not up to the task.

             
“Sure, Donny.  I’ll tag along,” Max said.  “Thanks for the invite.” 

What the hell was that?
Did I really say ‘invite’?  Did that word, in that context, come out of my mouth?
  Momentary assimilation to a hostile environment, he thought … s
urvival among the enemy.
  Blend in, blend in, Max Rosen, he was thinking when he donned the
Applebee Feed and Fowl
hat, and followed the giant out the back door.